AMAZING STORY

Bob Hamer: Undercover Christian

By Rob Hull
The 700 Club

CBN.com -“I’ve posed as a contract killer, a drug dealer, a residential burglar, a white-collar criminal, I was a pedophile for three years, I’ve been an international arms dealer...”

Bob Hamer spent 26 years with the FBIas an undercover agent. He’s been in gun battles and life threatening situations, but he says he felt a protection that the best body armor and cover couldn’t provide.

“I prayed before every undercover assignment,” he says “typically it was a prayer of strength, ‘God give me the strength to carry out this assignment.’ Each of those assignments had an element of danger. I was the undercover agent in the LA mafia family case where we took out the top 15 mob guys in LA. If they discovered who I was I could have been killed but there was usually a sense of peace because I thought I was where I was supposed to be.”

He found his calling while in his twenties. Bob applied for a job as an FBI agent, but was turned down due to a hiring freeze. Before accepting another job he stopped to pray.

“The next morning the FBI called and said, ‘We just had somebody drop out of our September class, are you still interested in being an FBI agent?’ I couldn’t have asked for a more direct answer to prayer. I always came back to that answer to prayer that I was meant to be in the FBI.”

Bob says his faith in God gave him comfort and protection.

“Deuteronomy 31:8 I love the verse where it says, ‘The Lord Himself will go before you and be with you, He will never leave you nor forsake you. Do not be discouraged, do not be afraid.’ And that verse meant a lot to me throughout my career. And there were times literally walking into an undercover mission, into an assignment, walking into a room full of men with guns, not knowing literally whether I’d come out alive where I was reciting that verse. It sustained me through some of the toughest assignments.”

And he maintained his Christian faith and values even while undercover.

“Even though I may have been portraying an international drug dealer or an arms dealer or a contract killer I was able to maintain those values. Now there were times when I felt like I was squeezing all of this evil out of my sponge-like brain before I went home to spend time with my wife and children, but I was able to compartmentalize.”

One of his toughest assignments was the three years he spent infiltrating a pedophile organization called NAMBLA, the North American Man Boy Love Association.

“In NAMBLA, I had to become one of them. I had to think like they did. The men that I was dealing with were seeing the world through a whole different set of eyes. And it was my most difficult case and my most disgusting case.”
Because of his undercover work several men in the group’s leadership were convicted on federal charges. His book, The Last Undercover, details his career in the FBI and the NAMBLA case.

“It was a book that I had to write. I wanted to alert the world to this organization and to the boy lover agenda. Most of the men that I dealt with sought the children that were seeking a father figure. A lot of their targets were from single-parent homes or from homes where there was an abusive father. What these men want to do, they want to create secrets, they want to have it secret that this is ‘just our secret that you can’t tell anyone.’”

Bob retired shortly after the NAMBLA case. The difficult roles and situations were part of learning he could trust God with his job and his life.

“He’s obviously proven to me that He’s going to protect me. I felt His protection for those 26 years and because I was successful. There was meaning to what I was trying to do and I was where God wanted me to be.”